tastytrade review 2024

Tastytrade is a brokerage built primarily for active traders looking to keep costs low, though it comes with a few notable omissions from a fully featured online broker. Tastytrade excels on costs, particularly for options and cryptocurrency, where it caps your commissions on individual trades regardless of size. And if you’re looking to find traders to copy, the broker’s “follow feed” lets you track a number of them. However, investors looking for bonds and mutual funds are out of luck here, while those who need research and education will want to look elsewhere. That said, tastytrade offers one of the best programs for fractional shares, popular with new and buy-and-hold investors.

The pricing for options and cryptocurrency are quite favorable at tastytrade, though Ally Invest and E-Trade both offer attractive commissions without having to trade huge quantities, too. If you’re looking for a broker geared toward active traders and with a full selection of tradable securities, then you should check out Interactive Brokers as well.

Pros: Where tastytrade stands out

Focus on trading securities

Tastytrade really focuses on securities that are popular with traders, where money can be quickly won (or lost). So if you’re looking for that kind of access and focus, then the broker may work for you. For example, tastytrade offers the following types of securities: 

• Stocks
• ETFs
• Options
• Futures
• Futures options
• Cryptocurrency

While some of these security types are geared more toward long-term investing, such as stocks and ETFs, the rest are more like short-term trades than investments. And, as noted below, tastytrade really structures its commissions to attract this kind of trading clientele. 

If you’re not here for this deep bench, you may prefer a broker such as Fidelity Investments or Charles Schwab, both of which offer traditional securities with more of a focus on investing.

Attractive commissions

Tastytrade has really designed its brokerage to appeal to active traders, especially in more niche securities such as futures and options. But even stock and ETF traders will find something to like here, with the broker’s $0 commission, which admittedly is on par for the industry today.

But you’ll see a real standout difference between tastytrade and other brokers when it comes to commissions on other products. Take options, for example. Unlike most brokers that charge you a commission when you buy and sell, tastytrade charges a flat rate on buys and no charge on the sale. tastytrade charges $1 per contract on the buy, translating into $0.50 per round-trip, compared to the industry standard of $0.65. Only a handful of brokers (Ally Invest, for one) hit that $0.50 level without a discount, though this doesn’t include other no-commissions players such as Robinhood and Webull. 

But tastytrade actually does more than this for options traders. It caps the commissions on each leg of an options trade to a bare-bones figure of $10. Trade 10 contracts and it will cost $10. Trade 20 contracts and you’ll still pay just $10, and so on. Of course, if you’re doing more exotic options trades with multi-legs, you’ll pay more in total because of the extra legs on the transaction. But each leg will still be charged $1 per contract and capped at $10 total. So a two-legged trade with 20 contracts would cost you $20, while 40 contracts would still cost $20. So options pricing is quite attractive here if you’re doing even modest volume.

Tastytrade also offers cryptocurrency trading and charges a 1 percent fee on both the buy and sell, but it caps this commission at $10 as well. So once your trade value surpasses $1,000, you’re not paying any extra commission on that specific transaction. If you trade $10,000 at a time, your effective commission is just 0.1 percent – in line with some of the best brokers for crypto. So it’s an attractive commission structure if you’re trading significant volume at one time. 

However, if you’re into futures, you’ll pay both an opening and closing commission of $1.25 for standard futures contracts. Micro futures and small futures are also available, at a lower price. 

Access to cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency has become a popular trading vehicle, and tastytrade gives you access to it, when many online brokers still won’t touch it (Robinhood and Webull being a few exceptions). Plus, you’ll have a decent percentage commission with a cap on it, as mentioned. 

At tastytrade you’ll be able to trade four different types of cryptocurrency, including some of the most popular ones, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin.

Follow Feed

Are you looking for a new trade idea? You can use Follow Feed to track the trades of select traders. You’ll see when they executed their trade, their strategy and their rationale. You’ll also get an idea of their trading expertise and record of returns, so you’re not following just anyone.

This feature is fully customizable, so you can add and delete traders as and when you want. It’s similar to the CopyTrader feature at eToro, and it adds a social element to the experience.

Fractional shares

Tastytrade has upped its game in this area, and now it offers fractional shares on both purchases and dividend reinvestment. With fractional shares, you can put all your money to work in the market and even with dividend reinvestment plans, small amounts are fully put to work. The minimum purchase amount is $5, and all fractional shares trades incur a $0.10 clearing fee per transaction. 

While fractional shares don’t mean much to traders, for newer or long-term investors they may be the difference between going with one broker over another. If they’re an important feature for you, have a look at Bankrate’s list of top brokers for fractional shares.

Cons: Where tastytrade could improve

Lacks major securities

Tastytrade offers many securities that are great for traders, but one could say it’s deep and not broad in that regard. For other investors, especially many typical long-term buy-and-hold types, it may prove less than attractive on this front. That’s because the broker does not offer some key areas at all, including bonds and mutual funds. It’s not just that tastytrade does not offer any no-transaction-fee mutual funds – there are no mutual funds at all! Ditto with bonds. And if you’re looking for another favorite of income investors, preferred stocks, you’re also out of luck. 

If you’re not an investor in those areas – and plenty of people aren’t – this gap won’t bother you at all, especially given the popular securities already on offer. 

Slow setup process

It may take you longer to set up an account on tastytrade than what you have become accustomed to. Often these days, you can establish a brokerage account in 15 minutes, fund it as part of the opening process or shortly thereafter and have a good look around on the inside.

When opening a tastytrade account, you may be hit with the following message: “Watch for a ‘Welcome’ email in 3-5 days when this account is ready for funding.” In a world where Robinhood will front you up to $1,000 immediately when you get started, tastytrade’ lead time seems surprisingly long. And you may not even be able to log into the trading platforms, either, until your account is fully authorized to trade. That could be a turn-off to traders ready to roll. 

Lack of education and deep research resources

It’s clear that tastytrade caters to active traders, and often brokers with that focus prioritize cost and other more client-relevant features, compared to education and deep research. That’s the case at tastytrade, and that’s alright if you’re in the audience that doesn’t need these perks.

Tastytrade doesn’t offer the depth of educational and planning articles that you would find at a leader such as Schwab or Fidelity. And it doesn’t offer the depth of stock research that you can find at these players. But it does offer some basic research as well as its Follow Feed to track traders. Clients also get access to streaming video with topics of interest to active traders, so you can stay on top of what traders are looking at and maybe join in the action yourself.

If you’re a newer investor or trader then, tastytrade might not be quite the resource you need. 

Account fees

Tastytrade charges a $75 fee for transferring out your account – about standard for the industry. A few brokers charge more, but this price is what most rivals charge. That said, Fidelity is a notable exception and charges no transfer-out fee, so if that matters, check them out. 

However, tastytrade does charge another non-standard fee, the IRA closeout fee, which it clips you $60 for, a pass-through from its clearing firm.